Femi Akomolafe is a computer consultant, writer and a social commentator/critic. Femi and his crew currently produce videos, films and documentaries. Femi lives in Kasoa, Ghana.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Africa, the usual beggar

“Europeans have a tendency of proclaiming ideas to the world that they do not believe themselves and would not dare live by if they are going to hold power over most of the people of the world.” – Professor John Henrik Clarke.

Sometime in February 2008, George Bush, the brain-challenged war-criminal that occupies the White House made a trip to Africa where he visited five countries. As usual the racist press in the West trumpeted the usual baloney that he was there to give aid and succor to hapless Africans who are, as usual, waiting with childlike helplessness for a White Father Christmas.

The usual lie has been told for about five hundred years that the White man in Africa is moved by altruistic motives to help his unfortunate cousin, too lazy or too primitive to help himself. And upon this patent falsehood has Europe build its scholarship. And it is this same falsehood that is being peddled by all the ideological institutions at the hand of Europe.

Sadly, many Africans have bought into this same mendacity.

Europe as an aid-giver? Give me a break. Europe’s greatest crime, as I’ve written elsewhere, is Europeans intellectual dishonesty. Having destroyed much of the non-white world, Europeans consciously set about to systematically recreate the world in their image. So we have today a people who should bury their collective head in shame going around the world swaggering with pride.

The historical truth, for those for whom doing simple research is not a burden, is that Europe was the last place on earth to see the light of civilization. More than half of human historical drama has passed before anyone noticed Europe. The Europe that invaded and destroyed much of the world’s civilization was a Europe that couldn’t feed or cloth itself. It was a Europe where a third of the population had perished from the plagues that perennially swept across Europe.

The yarn that Europeans set sail from their caves to go on global civilizing mission is simply that, yarn. To those dishonest ‘scholars’ who go around the world telling of a Europe bringing civilization to the rest of the world, I say go and read up on your shoddy and bloody past. Actually, they need not go further than reading Father Batholomew de Las Casas book, “ The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account,’ from where we read: “Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of weak outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers or lions that have been starved for days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola, once so populous (Having a population that I estimated to be more than three million) has now a population of barely two hundred persons.”

Let’s move on to the theme of this piece. Soon after he was elected to the French Presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy, that diminutive racist lout took off for Africa. He went on to insult Africa at a university in Dakar (wonder why the Africans in the audience stayed and listened to his rubbish!). Sarkozy claimed that Africa had no history. I wish just one of those Africa present had the presence of mind to tell him that while his ancestors were perishing from famine, one African Emperor, Mansa Musa, was on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he dazzled the Arabs with his wealth.

As usual the Western press were falling over themselves that Sarkozy was there to help Africa. At the end of his trip, no one bothered to tell us what he actually brought to Africa as gift. What I remember was that he succeeded in garnering multi-billion dollars contracts for French business concerns in Libya and Algeria. Yet, we were told that Sarkozy was in Africa to help Africans! If Mr. Sarkozy’s treasury is bursting with extra cash, why doesn’t he inject some in rebuilding the numerous slums around Paris? Or use it to help the unemployed youth rampaging in his country?

Sometime in the month of February 2008, the BBC World service aired a documentary about the poverty that’s ravaging Britain. They showed us images that would rival the worst of slums in any of the so-called Third world. Yet, the leaders of Britain will tell you that their main goal in life is how to try to help Africa. Their scholars and media will bandy astronomical figures as the amount of aid they have poured into Africa. We are never told where to find the projects they have purportedly been funding all these years.

The US at the moment is undergoing enormous economic crises. The national debt will soon reach double-digit trillion dollars. Unemployment is at all time high. Chicaneries at highest levels of corporate America have resulted in crisis of confidence in the financial sector. Billions of dollars have been wiped off the stock market with several banks posting huge losses. Many Americans are bound to lose their houses, bought at the nebulously-named sub-prime rates.

Charity, they say, begins at home. If George Bush has money fighting in his pockets, why doesn’t he help his fellow Americans? Was this not the same president who refused to help Black Americans when hurricane devastated their homes in New Orleans in 2005? I direct readers to Michael Moore’s open letter to Bush from which I quote: “No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.”Those Africans who haven’t been outside African can be excused for still believing the lies about a Europe engage in some humanitarian enterprise to help the world. But to any African, except for the seriously purblind, who have spent any time in Europe, the idea is just laughable. It would take more than a miracle for a white man to give you something for nothing.

What is lost in all the western cacophonies of ‘aid’ ‘help’ is the absence of hooplas about how much western companies are making in raping African resources from the Cape to Cairo!

Actually, our quarrel is not with the West but with Africans, especially, African leaders and elite who continue to delude themselves that they have some friends in the West who are trying to help us.

The sad truth is that Africa never had a friend and we are not likely to ever have one. So, I say that it’s time that we remove the blinkers from our eyes, cure ourselves of our delusions, roll up our sleeves and start the struggle for self survival\redemption\development. Nothing new here if we take the simple fact that no society has ever been developed through charity into account.

It was the inimitable Malcolm X who once said that: “It might be necessary to bite the hand that feeds you if it stops you from feeding yourself.” Now is the time to take our destiny firmly in our hands. Let’s say a big thank you to all the Western do-gooders trampling around our land. Let’s tell them to go and rest their tired bones – they must be tired after all these years. They cannot continue to guide us indefinitely. If a child has to grow and develop, it must wean itself from its parents at a point in life. Our time is now. The Asians have successfully weaned themselves away and we are witnesses to the good job they are making at rebuilding the lives.

So long as we refuse to build the institutions that will enable us set the prices of our minerals and produce, so long shall the rest of the world continue to take us for granted. So long shall Europeans who cannot feed or clothe themselves without us continue to swagger on our streets, spewing their usual nonsense about being on some humanitarian mission.

My advice to Western leaders\scholars is: Try and learn something from the Chinese. Come to us; engage in honest commerce and go back home. Spare us your useless proclamation of love and aid. We do not need your love and we, certainly, do not need your charity.

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I welcome you to my blog.

As you shall soon find out, I hold very strong opinions and I am never afraid to express them in the strongest terms possible.

As you shall also soon realise, I'm a passionate Pan-Africanist. It goes without saying that I am unconditionally opposed to racism in all its manifestations. I abhor the doctrine that skin colour confers some form of superiority.

While I am prepared to be a brother to one and all, I reject anyone playing BIG brother to me.

You are welcome to my blog; read and enjoy to your heart's content.

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I shall endeavour not to write anything herein except that which is true, factual and verifiable. If you find errors, I will appreciate your bringing it to my attention. I shall try and take note and correct them.

If your intention is to bandy insults around, I advise that you set up your own blog.

As my Yoruba people say: "Oju orun teye fo, lai fara gbara."

It means that the sky is big enough for all the birds to fly without touching wings.